Midwest Farmers Find Spiritual Purpose in Regenerative Agriculture

On 63 acres in Northfield, Minnesota, maple trees and native hazelnut bushes stand out against the corn and soybean fields that dominate southern Minnesota. The farm, Salvatierra Farms, was once a conventional row-crop operation. Today it is run by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, an agronomist and regenerative farmer who grew up in the northern Guatemalan rainforest, and it operates without herbicides, pesticides or chemical fertilizers.

Haslett-Marroquin, who has Achi and other Maya heritage, draws on both formal agricultural training and the teachings of his Indigenous elders. His approach has attracted a network of Midwesterners who farm with spiritual motivations — Lakota tribal members, former large-scale farmers and Catholic sisters among them.

That network reflects broader shifts: growing interest in nature-based spirituality, rethinking of modern agriculture, climate anxiety and rising attention to health and wellness. "These dark green spiritualities — the ones that have a kind of sense of the intrinsic value of nature, of our belonging to it and not superiority over it — are growing rapidly around the world," said Bron Taylor, an environmental studies professor at the University of Florida.

Eco-spirituality and regenerative agriculture are not new. Nineteenth-century homesteaders pledged to cultivate public land; the 1960s brought a back-to-the-land movement alongside a new environmentalism. Many contemporary land-stewardship practices trace to Indigenous traditions developed over centuries. Those practices were largely overshadowed as the food system scaled up to feed a growing global population, but they are finding new life on some large conventional farms and among young farmers.

Rob Myers, director of The Center for Regenerative Agriculture, described the approach as "farming in a way that is good for the health of the soil, the health of the land and the health of our people and communities." What that means varies by farmer. Many in the United States practice a single method, such as planting cover crops or avoiding tillage; others take a more holistic approach.

In Missouri, teacher-turned-farmer Josh Payne began in 2020 transitioning his grandfather's land from row crops to fully regenerative animal grazing and agroforestry, incorporating naturally growing chestnut trees and other native vegetation. He describes the shift as rooted in his evolving Christian faith and influenced by Christian writers such as the late Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry, who argued that the Bible teaches the Earth is a gift from God meant to be cared for. "My faith helped me understand that what I do is a vocation," Payne said.

Haslett-Marroquin does not follow organized religion, but he sees common ground with anyone spiritually connected to the land. He envisions a regenerative system that empowers small farmers and their communities — a global movement that "restores all of creation and gives us a different reason to live and have purpose."

Growing up poor, he and his brothers trekked into the rainforest to help their father plant crops. The work was exhausting but awakened his kinship with nature. "That's where we lived," he said. "That can uplift an innate intelligence that we are born with." After moving to Minnesota in the early 1990s with his wife, he set out to challenge the conventional system and farm with what he calls a spiritual integrity that allows all living things to flourish.

In 2022 he co-founded Tree Range Farms, a group of independent poultry producers using regenerative practices. The farms raise thousands of organic, free-range chickens beneath growing perennials such as hazelnut and elderberry bushes. Salvatierra Farms, started in 2020, doubles as a research and training facility and serves as Haslett-Marroquin's blueprint for the wider movement. "To me, a little bit of knowledge with a lot of wisdom and solid spiritual grounding is where the solutions are going to come from," he said.

Nick Hernandez of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota is part of that community. He met Haslett-Marroquin in 2016 while seeking ways to reconnect his community to the land through food, and learned regenerative poultry practices from him. "I see food as a way of not only finding healing, both mentally, physically, spiritually, and culturally, but as a way of being able to develop ourselves," Hernandez said. In 2020 he started Makoce Agriculture Development, a nonprofit that is rebuilding Indigenous food systems on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, including a working farm.

Gail Fuller, a former large-scale farmer who grew genetically modified corn and soybeans on 3,200 acres of family land in Kansas, met Haslett-Marroquin in 2020 at a soil conference in Salina. Fuller was already moving away from conventional practices, including chemical weed killer, after feeling mentally and physically unwell and betrayed by the industry he loved. "When you farm from a kill mindset for how many generations, how can that be a positive on the farmer or on the farm?" he said. He now owns Circle 7 Fuller Farms with his wife Lynette, 50 miles from the land his family farmed for generations, and spends most of his days barefoot working with grazing animals on land he says saved him.

Ceremony remains central to Haslett-Marroquin's sense of well-being. In June he led about 100 people in prayer around a bonfire at the "Halfway to Harmony" summer solstice event at the Organic Compound, a nearby family farm in Faribault, Minnesota. "When it is all said and done, we are simply expressions of the energy of the Earth and the universe," he said.

The Crombie family, which owns the Organic Compound, were early recruits to his extended community and pioneers in applying the regenerative poultry blueprint at commercial scale. They had returned to gardening on family land once used for rotational crops and were looking to diversify in ways that paired with his approach. "When we play together, when we pray together, when we sing together, when we work on the land together … of course it's going to heal us," Wil Crombie said at the solstice gathering. "That's the future that I want."

Haslett-Marroquin's latest ambition is a partnership with the Catholic Church. He sees potential for change in the church's global landholdings and in the environment-friendly additions to its social teachings in the 2015 document Laudato Si. In southwestern Wisconsin, the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa have lived out the belief that creation is sacred for decades, said Sister Julie Schwab. The 179-year-old teaching community now leases its land to two regenerative dairy farmers through the nonprofit Fields of Sinsinawa, which also trains farmers in innovative agricultural practices.